Contemporary discourses around corporate social responsibility and their influence on business and society relations

Abstract

[eng] This thesis is about discourses in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and specifically the discussion around the role of business and their contribution towards social development. These issues have implications for how the outcomes of development and progress are distributed in society and for how firms gain legitimacy. A review of CSR discourses was published in 2008 by Banerjee in the article “Corporate social responsibility: The good, the bad and the ugly”. I believed it was necessary to update his review to consider the new emerging discourses that seek to change the main considerations around the concept of CSR, especially regarding the power relations CSR creates. This updating of CSR discourses is important from a practical point of view, for example, to provide information for multinationals that need to balance international CSR and ethical standards with the local needs of a diverse set of stakeholders spread across the globe. A categorization of CSR discourses also seems to be necessary so that social movements and local communities can have an overview of the positions of the various stakeholders and their different mental models around the CSR concept. Therefore, the research gap that this thesis aims to address is the lack of a recent overview of the different CSR discourses that clarifies propositions around: What is the main purpose of CSR?; Who should define CSR?; and Who should benefit from the overall action of CSR?. The primary overarching research question of this thesis is: How has CSR discourses of the last decade (2010-2020) changed the understanding of the relationship between business and society? Secondary research questions are: How have the emerging CSR discourses reshaped ideas around business and society?; What should be the main purpose of CSR?; Who should define CSR?; and Who should benefit from CSR actions?. To address these questions, I developed a set of research papers, presented in the form of chapters. Their main findings are summarised below. Chapter 2: While evidence based-decision making and quantitative evaluation can assist in better understanding whether a CSR program is having positive effects, evaluations can also serve to legitimize the corporate interest and silence diverse and potentially contesting views about the CSR program results and corporate behaviour. Then, I consider whether the interest of corporations to measure their CSR programs and the emergent use of quantitative evaluation methods could represent an increasing power imbalance situation. Chapter 3: With increasing demands around measuring, mitigating and compensating for climate change challenges, international agencies are creating instruments, such as the Green New Deal and the Circular Economy Plan 2.0. These are creating new market opportunities that seem to be well adapted to the private sector. However, this could also imply an excessive regulatory burden, especially on SMEs, and the need to address technological investments and innovation processes that are necessary but costly. I argue that these new requirements on SMEs are likely to increase the power imbalance between multinationals and SMEs that now need to follow these new regulatory demands. Chapter 4: Power imbalances can be exacerbated by poor corporate conflict management and thus increasing the dependency of vulnerable communities. In the case of mega-infrastructure projects, improved insights for conflict management theories can come from the research field of political ecology, with its concern about social justice and a fair distribution around the use of and access to natural resources. This could bring light to complexities in the relationships between nature and society, and can inform the business management research field. Chapter 5: Social movements can achieve positive results in terms of cultural power change, the conflict positioning of people, and even policy change. However, the effects of social movement actions might not be able to change company behaviour. Although societal changes can occur, it is still unknown if companies will adapt and listen to new social demands and views about development preferences and local expressions around how extraction activities should operate, especially in biodiversity-rich areas. The main conceptual contribution of this thesis is to present an updated framework of CSR discourses and their approaches regarding the relationship between business and society. Although I believe that the understanding of CSR has not fundamentally changed from Banerjee’s (2008) thoughts, meaning that CSR is a legitimation tool, I have identified a range of competing discourses that have gained prominence, and I have considered their propositions around the main purpose of CSR, who should define this, and who should benefit from the CSR actions. The framework of CSR discourses outlines six key CSR discourses that emerged between 2000 and 2020. (1) A ‘post colonialist discourse’, which understands that CSR seeks to legitimize corporate power and that corporations should define and benefit from the CSR actions. (2) A ‘political ecology discourse’ that posits CSR should aim to respect and avoid actions that could interfere or harm local livelihoods, worldviews, and the culture of local communities. Thus, local communities should define and benefit from the CSR action. (3) A ‘discourse around the policy effects of social movements’, whose main proposition is that policy and institutions are key to rule CSR and business behaviour. For this discourse, social movements and citizens, especially those thinking about development models paths, should define and benefit from CSR. (4) Another discourse is proposing the ‘quantitative measurement of CSR programs’, because this can prove that CSR has positive results for communities and companies. Thus, CSR managers should define what is the CSR action about. (5) The ‘green economy’ discourse, which proposes that the aim of CSR is to transform business models to create carbon neutral companies. Then, multilateral organizations should define the CSR action. (6) And the “environmental, social and governance-ESG- discourse’, which aims to offer low risk investment opportunities, meaning that investors and data vendors should define the content of CSR and that investors should be the main actor receiving benefits from the CSR actions. While many CSR studies are case studies or address CSR from a specific perspective (Crane et al., 2017; Maillet et al., 2021), this thesis takes a broad approach of CSR, with nuances according to how CSR is understood by the discourses’ proponents. In this research, I aimed to explain CSR from different lenses showing that the different perspectives can imply an understanding that can even be in tension with other discourses. This is the methodological contribution of this thesis, an approach that could serve for future research projects intending to interpret empirical or secondary data. With the results of this thesis, we know now that different stakeholders read CSR information in different ways because their mental models, and the meanings of the issues involved in the CSR actions, are different for each discourse proponent. In terms of practical implications, the CSR discourse framework can be useful for policy makers while establishing rules and policies for governing business behaviour. Corporate managers at headquarters and those localized throughout the value chain can also benefit from being aware of major critiques on the role of corporations and the negative impact on firm performance and the risk portfolio. By addressing silent and silenced issues and power imbalance, companies can build more resilient relations with their communities of interest. An informed perspective from business executives about the real concerns and meaning of natural resources for local and Indigenous communities seems to be an approach that could drive operational continuity and sustainability. While the presence of mega infrastructure projects creates tensions and creates contradictory outcomes, discussing these tensions and contradictions between companies and communities could lead to a participatory process of determining the measures that could also be implemented. From the contributions of this thesis, several specific recommendations can be derived: (1) Impact evaluations of corporate social investment programs should include qualitative as well as quantitative data. The information gained from this qualitative data, if appropriately acted upon, will likely assist in obtaining and maintaining a social license to operate. (2) Circular business models can create new market opportunities for SMEs while also triggering innovations in relation to sustainable materials and processes. SMEs can advocate to government and multi-lateral government agencies to inform the policymaking process about their main needs, and the market and regulatory obstacles they face. (3) Senior corporate executives would be more successful in addressing the conflicts with the communities where they operate if they would embrace the local culture, understand the history of the conflict, and consider the underlying roots of the tensions. (4) Senior corporate executives would be more successful in addressing CSR and conflict if they would understand social movements, including that social movements can change cultural power, transform power imbalances, affect the community positioning towards a mining project, and even influence public policies about issues related to the conflict.